Month: July 2024

The gift stops once we stop circulating it.

Once we hoard it, it no longer becomes a gift. Instead, we turn it into a commodity. Something we have and that no one else does.

The power of gifts is that they bring us closer together. Commodities, on the other, remind us what is missing.

What I am talking about here is the truth. That is not the total truth, of course. But most don’t want to hear something closer to the truth than the narration we tell ourselves.

That’s why it is so difficult to invoke change. Not because we don’t have the capacity. It’s way more to do with what we say about ourselves and our beliefs.

The internet is broken. Not completely. Because you have crowd-sourced projects like Wikipedia and the ability to look up recently published papers from MIT, but when you search on Google, the algorithm tells us what we want to hear for clicks. It moves to the top of the marketer that paid for that spot, not what is best. It’s not just Google but how social media is designed.

The point is, the internet, in some ways, is better than ever, and yet the parts that don’t work are the worst it has ever been. They are making it unusable at times. We can see this during political cycles.

Of course, there are some programs and devices that break that model. But the question I keep returning is: How is this improving humanity? And the answer doesn’t feel intuitively reasonable. I hope that AI will break it so we can start over and, in the process, create a better internet.

Humans want to deal with worst case scenarios. Its because we don’t deal with absolutes, we are emotional, and our imagination can take us to some wild places.

We spend so much time worrying about the worst and spend so little thinking of the best.

It’s far better to admit that your path is going in the wrong direction and that you need to turn around or start over than it is to keep going.

This culture puts a lot of shame on people for making mistakes. That’s because we forgot to explore. While the territory is now limited, what is endless is the creative sphere.

This is the space where we tend to hide. If we say we are not creative, then no one expects us to do anything creative.

Yet, with every problem you solve, every project you finish, every joke made, and every idea brought to the table…these are all creative acts.

Creativity is the last space not for “those” who have it and those who do not. Sure, some get the privilege to do it for a living. But if we examine our lives further, we see we are more creative than we give ourselves credit for.

Tools can make us feel right for the part. They can be a placebo.

But they also can be a crutch to hide.

“I can’t possibly start until I have the best tools” is just an excuse.

Lots of books have been written on a legal pad. Da Vinci never had an app to sketch out the Mona Lisa.

Use what you gotcha to get started.

Exercising the mind is not like the body. No one can see the results of studying six hours a day, six days a week. Instead of, we hand someone a diploma that’s says they did they are now competent. And we think that must mean intelligence.

The thing is about measuring intelligence, it isn’t something that can be easily measured. No matter how much we try. There is no benchmark for Emotional Intelligence. Maybe the smartest scientist in the world can’t express themselves or change a tire.

We lump intelligence into this category of books when in reality, we should be evaluating the whole.

I’ve heard that every rock on a mountain is on a journey. Just might take millions upon millions of years to reach its destination. Every once in a while, however, something breaks loose.

Patience is the key in your endeavor.

The hard part, at times, can be crushing.

The question shouldn’t be, “When is this over?” but instead, “How long can I endure?”